Tonite I hopened my garage door with the electric opener. Suddenly, BANG the left side spring just broke and it went wild bending some elements like the end bracket that holds the spring on the ceiling. Lucky enough I did install a safety cable, as it was recommended by an inspector when I bought my house 5 years ago.

I'm glad I did it, I now know how much strain there is on the spring when the door is opened. You can't imagine... If it would'nt have been secured I'm sure it would have done quite a lot of damages, or even hit me HARD.

So for those who don't have a safety cable running inside the spring, please do it ASAP. Thrust me, the spring really goes WILD.

Here's a pic of the bracket. Note that the hook was facing the door before it go hit by the spring assembly, and now it is bended 90 degree left!!!

For those who don't have a security metal wire going through the big spring, do it ASAP, you can't imagne the damages that this wild spring can do. Luckily my car was'nt in the garage. The wire detached after the spring broke and it would have done a lot of damages to the car, and even me because I was right behing the bracket that go hit.

Good to see this.I've been wondering if anyone else had this happen. Last summer I hit the garage door opener I was in the garge. The spring didn't brake for about 10 seconds. I turned too go to the back of the garage heard a big noise and ducked. When the spring broke it just grazed the side of my head. Went between the car &wall over the top of my head. That day was probably the luckiest day of my life & somebody was defnitely looking over me. Door didn't have safety cables,but has new springs & safety cables.

Had the same thing happen years ago, spring broke and took out the fender to our old Ford. After that the safety cables got put in, then switched to the new style garage door spring with the new for a few years ago.

Those springs can be dangerous. They have a lot of tension and if you are not careful when adjusting them they will seriously do some damage to you. I have heard some bad stories from when there was a garage door repair man out at my house to fix a loose spring.

Yeah, I've had several break... its scary but the cable keeps it from causing any damage.

Really simple to replace, I just pick up a pair from Home Depot (just match the color codes) and always replace in pairs. The only trick is to *not* remove all springs before starting installation - you need to follow the cable routing from the 2nd spring while replacing the first.